Goals for 2019

In a bit of holiday downtime, I’m planning what I’d like to do in 2019. Beeminder is having a New Year’s Resolution Survivor competition, with contestants listed here. The basic idea is to commit to a goal for the whole year of 2019, and stick to it throughout. I’ve decided to enter with three different goals:

• Meditate, which I blogged about here.

I’ll be committing to an achievable 1.5 hours per week, which I may increase later in the year.

• Pages read.

I’m committing to reading 200 pages from a book each week. In 2019 I averaged 299, but that was without working. I think 200 is a difficult but achievable goal, and setting a goal in pages rather than books will allow me to read longer books. You can see the fifty books I read in 2019 here, and I reflected on the ten best here.

• Pomodoros written.

(A pomodoro, for me, is a 25-minute block of time.) I’m committing to writing 40 pomodoros each month, which works out to about 20 hours—including ten minute breaks each hour, for which my wrists will thank me. In other words, it is a count of how many blocks of time I do nothing else but write, whether that’s in a journal, for a blog, or some other form of composition.

I think the writing goal will probably be the hardest, but depending on what 2019 ends up looking like, reading could also be difficult. One of the reasons I’m writing this post, my blog goal, is one that I’m probably going to want to vary in pace over the year, which is why I’ve not included it.

In any case, happy new year, and best of luck as you make or break your resolutions!

I'm Bryan Kam. I'm thinking about complexity and selfhood. Please sign up to my newsletter, follow me on Mastodon, or see more here.